Published on: 2023-06-20T17:16:52+00:00
Significant changes to sender code have been proposed by Thomas Voegtlin in an email conversation. He suggests extending BOLT-11 to enable invoices to contain two bundled payments with distinct preimages and amounts. The purpose of this proposal is to facilitate services that require prepayment of mining fees, such as submarine swaps and JIT channels. Currently, requesting prepayment poses challenges for service providers, and the proposed extension aims to address these issues.There are ongoing discussions and differing opinions regarding the implementation of this proposal. Matt Corallo expresses skepticism about introducing new changes to BOLT-11, citing the difficulty of gaining broad support even for small changes. He questions the necessity of the proposed feature when splice-out already exists and suggests using OMs (Opaque Messages) for increased privacy in any "standard" way of doing swaps.In response to Matt's concerns, Thomas emphasizes the minimalistic nature of the proposed change and its potential benefits for service providers. He believes that implementing this feature would level the playing field among Lightning service providers, making it more accessible to a wider range of users and allowing for non-custodian services. Thomas also mentions the possibility of implementing this feature in LDK and confirms Electrum's support for it.The proposed bundled payments in BOLT-11 invoices require the receiver to wait for both payments' HTLCs (Hash Time-Locked Contracts) to arrive before fulfilling the prepayment. Once both payments are received, the receiver can fulfill the prepayment's HTLCs and broadcast their on-chain transaction. However, there is still a risk of the main payment failing if the sender does not reveal its preimage.Thomas acknowledges that this proposal does not prevent service providers from stealing the prepayment but argues that the risk already exists. He believes that implementing this feature would level the playing field among Lightning service providers, making it more accessible to a wider range of users and allowing for non-custodian services.In summary, Thomas Voegtlin proposed an extension to BOLT-11 that would enable invoices to contain two bundled payments with distinct preimages and amounts. This feature aims to facilitate services requiring prepayment of mining fees, such as submarine swaps and JIT channels. The proposal has generated discussions about backward compatibility, implementation strategies, and the potential benefits for service providers. The discussion took place on the Lightning-dev mailing list hosted by the Linux Foundation.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T01:14:48.800899+00:00